Relatively brief at a tidy 76 minutes, Polytechnique still packs a pretty strong whallop. No surprise, considering the subject matter, the École Polytechnique massacre of December 6, 1989. Directed by Denis Villeneuve—his first feature since 2000’s Maëlstrom—and co-conceived by co-star Karine Vanasse, it’s a tightly controlled and focused retelling of the events of that terrible day (and some of its aftermath). The film is lensed in beautiful black and white by cinematographer Pierre Gill, a choice that’s bold these days but that serves the subject matter well.

The film was shot in the increasingly popular linguistically “versioned” method, with both English and French versions of the film. Though this can be pretty awkward, the English version works well here, if you can get over the slight strangeness of Quebecois characters with French accents conversing between each other in accented English. Still, there’s not much dialogue and the minor oddness doesn’t get in the way. A second disc contains a couple French-only special features dealing with the legacy of the massacre. Don’t let the grimness of the subject matter put you off; this is a very strong film with none of the movie-of-the-week ham-handedness you might expect from a movie about a Canadian tragedy.

As the fall TV season approaches, a whole bunch of recent seasons of popular shows are popping up on DVD. There’s the second season HBO’s often hilarious Flight of the Conchords, the musical comedy about a New Zealand folk duo trying to make it in the Big Apple; the second season of the seemingly universally-adored Gossip Girl; and yet another second season, this one of the David Duchovny-starring, sex-obsessed Californication. With so much good TV coming at us these days, it’s getting almost impossible to catch up. But as the fall season doesn’t really start for a month or so (though HBO is, as always, working on its own schedule, with True Blood and Entourage already running new episodes), you have a pretty good head start.